I turned down a really nice job offer the other night. An editor I know is looking to start his own small press and wanted me to have a key role in the operations, everything from editing to PR work.

I felt bad, but I had to turn him down.

It’s an issue of focus. My goal is to be the best writer I can be, and that doesn’t mean spending a lot of time reading other people’s slush, or going to events and being social. It means a lot of sitting in front of a keyboard and making stuff happen, usually not good stuff, but if you do enough and scrape off the bad, things start looking better.

Honestly, I have been wondering if small press is really the way to go. I used to think that they would be the next-generation gatekeepers, but from my experiences with a publisher, I wonder how many of them are really up to that role.

No, I said PEER review

I spent most of this weekend reading for other people, something I enjoy doing and I’m getting better at.

The first thing on my  list was a short novel by Adam J Whitlatch, an expansion of his “Weller” short story. This is the 2nd full-length novel I’ve read for Adam. They’re both shaping up nicely.

The other piece is a 10,000 word sample from Catherine Schaff Stump who wrote a wonderful little book called Hulk Hercules Professional Wrestler. We are going to workshop one another’s pieces during Paradise ICON, a workshop which runs concurrent to my local Science Fiction convention.

Now, I just have to find time for my own work.

If you look over the evolution of the vampire, you see an interesting phenomena. Over the years, the vampire has gone from the monstrous Nosferatu to the mysterious, tragic character of Count Dracula, to the homoerotic Louis and Lestat of Interview with the Vampire,to the sparkly teen heartthrob Edward Cullen.

Because of the adverse reaction to Twilight, it seems like a lot of people are writing off vampires lately. This is, of course, silly. There are still plenty of awesome vampires out there as long as they can keep it in their pants–yes, I’m looking at you, Laurell K Hamilton*.

Here’s the thing. I don’t really care. I liked vampires before Twilight. I liked vampires before Anne Rice’s vampires, and I will continue to like vampires. I will not grow tired of vampires, and I don’t care if a vampire book doesn’t “bring something new to the table,” as long as it makes with the fangs and the biting and the blood. Some people might say that’s a plebeian attitude. I say it’s a level of awesome they will just never understand.

* And seriously, LKH, you do know there are men out there packing less than 8 inches, don’t you? Don’t you?

I’m doing what may be the final re-write of my book Panic No More, about Nick, the son of a formerly prominent family who is harassed by the Goat God.

I think this is my fifth re-write of this book, and part of the reason why I’ve never been satisfied with it is I never quite started it off right. I had lots of good ideas, but I could never quite nail down the first scene.

Then I had an epiphany. I was so worried about what other people would think of my beginning, I forgot to write what I wanted to write. I had done all the things that the books on writing tell you to do, but I wasn’t really happy with it myself.

I was trying to eliminate the long front porch and get quickly to the character interaction, and jump immediately into action, saving the backstory for later. And the more I did all of those things, the more I didn’t like it.

So, instead of jumping right into the action, I started over 150 years before the story starts. And I think it worked. I like it, at least. Here’s a taste:

In 1852, Nick’s Great-Great Grandfather Clayton Earl Baker moved from Philadelphia to Iowa and made his home in the newly-founded state capitol of Iowa City, which he believed would soon become the next gateway to the west, a bustling metropolis which would rival St. Louis in size. He was wrong, of course.

 

The capitol moved on in 1857, but by then Clayton had set down roots, sinking his entire fortune into a factory which produced his patented dental instruments and anesthetics, and building Baker House, an expansive Victorian home, which rivaled many eastern estates in its opulence if not its size.

Picture unrelated

On Sunday, I really wanted to write. I didn’t rush into it though. It had been a while, and I was afraid my juices might not be properly flowing. On the wisdom that sometimes the anticipation is more rewarding than the actual consummation, I purposefully did not write for most of the day.

I often fail at creative endeavors before noon anyway, being more of a night person.

I sat down in the early afternoon, and put finger to keyboard, only to have to spend the next forty minutes dealing with a broken printer and trying to figure out how to reset the default fonts in Scrivener, which I forget how to do every four weeks. After that, I spent twenty minutes having a mini-breakdown. Then I had a coffee.

For some reason, every time I sit down to write, I am nearly paralyzed with the worry that I will have somehow forgotten to write like I write, and will end of with a Dan Brown novel, or John Grisham, or someone who is simply not me.

Finally, I was ready to write, and, to my amazement, I seem to still be capable. I’ve been averaging 900 words a day ever since. This might not seem like a great deal, but, for me, it means as many cylinders are firing as are ever likely to.